Wanted: Superbomb Stoppers

The Pentagon’s $4 billion bomb-fighting crew is looking for some new gear. So if anyone has to gizmos for blunting explosively-formed projectiles or stopping deep-buried improvised bombs, now’s the time to speak up.

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, issued the request for proposals a few weeks back. The group is looking for a whole range of technologies to detect, neutralize, and armor against the insurgent weapons of choice. (Even though the value of this hardware has been the subject of some debate, within the agency.) But, these days, JIEDDO is particularly interested in dealing with two threats which have mushroomed in the last 18 months: explosively-formed projectiles, or EFPs, are the "superbombs" which shoot out armor-piercing molten metal as fast as two kilometers per second; deep-buried IEDs are giant explosives, placed up to 2 meters below the surface of road. Here’s a video – we’ve shown it before — of one going off. Scary.